Bus passenger died while trying to keep driver from crashing

MARSHALL (AP)  A North Texas woman who was the only person killed in a tour bus wreck was trying to keep the driver from crashing after he apparently passed out, according to an investigator.

Errainer Archie, 42, of Irving was ejected through the windshield and into a tree when the bus crashed along Interstate 20 on Sunday, said Jimmy Benton, trooper with the Texas Department of Public Safety.

"Ms. Archie did try to take control of the vehicle," Benton told the Marshall News Messenger in Tuesday's editions. "That explains why she was the only one that was out of her seat."

He said the victim's mother, Dorothy Archie, and sister, Katherine Archie, both also from Irving, were on the Shuttle King bus and saw her efforts to get control of the bus, which was returning to Dallas from a trip to casinos in Bossier City, La.

"Somebody had to do something," said Benton.

The DPS said the bus driver, Bill T. Nash, told investigators he couldn't remember what happened in the moments before the accident, which injured about 50 passengers.

The 65-year-old Saginaw man's wife, Helen, had tried unsuccessfully to wake him when he slumped over. She was also partially ejected in the wreck but is now in good condition, Benton said.

"It didn't sound like he was sleeping," he said. "They couldn't even get him up. For some reason, he passed out."

Nash and four passengers remained Tuesday at Good Shepherd Medical Center in Longview. Their conditions were not determined.

The bus had picked up its 58 passengers at the Isle of Capri casino in Bossier City and was about three miles west of Marshall  140 miles east of Dallas  when the wreck occurred. The bus swerved off the highway on the right shoulder, then over-corrected across the west-bound lanes and into the median, where it crashed into pine trees that separate the east- and west-bound lanes.

Benton said that he took a blood sample from Nash for testing but did not believe alcohol was a factor.

Executives of Shuttle King, the Dallas-based operator of the bus, said Nash was in satisfactory condition and that they were still investigating the accident, but that it didn't appear that mechanical failure was a cause of the crash. The impact crumpled a portion of the front of the bus, ripping a hole in the roof above the door. Passengers and emergency workers helped people from the bus.

All but five of the bus passengers have been released from hospitals, Benton said.

Nash started "wobbling and weaving" just before crashing, a 28-year-old passenger said.

"I told my parents, 'There's something wrong with him.' We started hitting trees, and everyone was bouncing around. I heard people yelling in the front," Monica Mullins told the Marshall News-Messenger.

On April 24, a bus with 13 passengers returning from a Louisiana casino trip crashed into a telephone pole after the driver suffered an apparent heart attack. The driver was dead at the scene of the 6 a.m. accident on U.S. 165, near Kinder, La.